Bangalore: With 2011 waving us all goodbye, there are some things that techies will always remember when they look back at this year.
1. The birth of Google+: Google ventured in to the social networking domain with Google+, which issued private invites for the launch of its beta version, but receiving a limited edition invite soon became a popular thing and everybody wanted one. Google+ then became available to everybody, and Buzz (which had privacy-related concerns and problems) had to go away so that people would focus on the new social networking site. Google+ was different from other social media sites as it incorporated the concepts of categorizing friends into “circles” and a group video chat feature called “hangouts”.
2. The war of the patents: Apple warred over patent rights and sued Samsung, HTC and Motorola (notable android phone and mobile device development companies) since they had used the features, and style of Apple products. Samsung and Apple have filed around 24 court suits since April all around the world, with Apple scoring partial wins in the form of delaying the release of the Samsung Galaxy 10.1 tab in Australia, and banning it temporarily in Germany. However, this month saw Apple also denied the petition to temporarily prohibit the launch of four other Samsung products.
3. Netflix and its indecision: October saw Netflix was emerging as one of the top DVD rental and movie streaming sites, with around 20 million subscribers. However, its decisions to split the business into NetFlix for streaming and Qwickster for renting DVDs; and to double the rates of its services caused an outcry among its customers. By the time the company revoked its decision in the same month, it had lost around 800,000 customers, as revealed during its earning calls.
4. RIM’s migraines: RIM suffered a lot of problems this year with its newly released “Playbook” tablet not making as many sells as hoped, and the sold playbooks facing the need to be recalled due to a problem in the device’s software. Moreover, the company’s music sharing software was made belittled, while the company’s largest network outage caused its market share in the US to shrink, and the company’s website was hacked after it offered its co-operation with the UK government in the aftermath of the riots and havoc in London.
5. Sony hacked too… twice: Sony was hacked twice this year with the first event leaving 70 million gamers in the lurch, and the second event making people question the credibility of its security system. Sony had to boost its PR by sending out a “welcome back” package to all its customers affected by the hack so that it could keep its customers with it.
6. Speaking of Hacks…: Hacker collectives Anonymous and LulSec took center stage this year with the attacks they raged on websites that ranged from belonging to the CIA and US defense contractors to child pornography and MasterCard and gaming websites. Moreover, they played pranks, defacing various other websites and are still wanted by Interpol and cybercrime authorities all over the world.
7. Social media helped the world become a better place: Social media sites such as Facebook helped Egyptians come together and revolt against the 30-year rule of a dictator, Hosni Mubarak. As a result, the government blocked the website, but some natives found work-around it and used the website as a platform to express themselves. By the time the website came back online, Egyptians were celebrating the end of Mubarak’s reign, and praised Facebook for providing them means to come together.
8. iPhone 4S and iPad 2: Apple brought its audience another two more shiny devices that captivated people all around the world with its high end technology. The iPhone 4S brought in a personal voice-activated assistant called Siri. The iOS5 was the major highlight of the device with all its new features. The iPad 2 was thinner, sleeker and had an all powerful processor that wowed all its users.
9. Android dominating the world: Google’s OS dominated the world as the most used platform this year, among mobiles as well as tablets and computers.
10. Facebook’s f8 developer conference:Facebook’s newly released Timeline and OpenGraph were new featured that made major changes to the way users prioritized information on Facebook, and it was welcomed by most.
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